The next morning, Tuesday, September 20, Paul Adamson went to a police station and filed a complaint for nonpayment of services against the people who had ordered his taxi in the name of Wildrick at 224 West 25th Street. A policeman was detailed to go to that address and place the occupants under arrest. When Florence and Eddie were brought into the station house, they agreed to pay their one-third share of the cab fare, which included Charles but not the now vanished Martin Held, and were then released.1
At around the same time, Charles Hurlburt had gone to a police station and filed a complaint for kidnapping and extortion against Flo, Eddie, and Held. As he neared his boardinghouse, he noticed Eddie following him at a discreet distance, so he immediately approached Patrolman Hewitt, handed over the revolver he had purchased the day before for protection, and indicated Brooks—still following—as the kidnapper he had previously told him about.
Hewitt placed Eddie under arrest and searched him. In his pockets, he found the signed confession, the promissory note for $500, and the directives for acquiring Charles’s keys and bank books, as well as for gaining admission to his boardinghouse room. On the way to the station house, Eddie warned Charles that he had better not pursue this matter, but Charles told him he would see it through to the end. Given the previous passivity of Charles Hurlburt, and the nature of Badger Game victims in general, this must have been the last thing that Eddie and Flo expected from him. It is another indication that the accusations of his preference for “unnatural” sex were likely fabricated, as he would be reluctant to have this come out in a public forum if it were true.
Eddie was put in the Tombs pending a grand jury hearing and, later that day, an officer was sent out to arrest Florence, who claimed to be “very much surprised” by her arrest. She wanted to do “two or three little things” before going with the policeman, such as finish drinking her gin (“I always drank when I got excited”) and fix her belt, but he told her to hurry up or he would call for the wagon by putting his head out the window to tell the neighborhood that she was under arrest for blackmail and extortion. She demanded to see a warrant and was told he did not need one. “I think you do not have a warrant,” she responded, then relented. “I have been up against trouble before with the police and I will go with you.” Before they left, the landlady, Mrs. Grygiel, came in and took back her key to the room.
On her way to the police court, Florence tried to put a brave face on it. She had been through the “third degree” before, she told them, and nothing they did to her would “jar” her. She had no idea what Eddie Brooks had done to Charles Hurlburt, but he was probably just trying to scare him away, as Brooks was very much in love with her and jealous of any attentions that other men paid to her. He would not have gone through with any threats, she insisted. They were engaged to be married as soon as her divorce from Tad Wildrick was finalized at a hearing to be held later in the month of September.
After hearing Hurlburt’s testimony at the police court, Magistrate Steinert called the saga “one of the boldest badger games ever attempted in this city.” Once again, Florence found herself in the Tombs, New York City’s jail. That evening, Fred Burns showed up at the police station asking to see his daughter but was told he could not. Visibly distraught and with tears in his eyes, Fred begged the lieutenant to keep the name of “Burns” off the police record and use Florence’s married name of Wildrick instead. “Enough notoriety has been brought to my name,” he wept, “and I should like to be spared this additional humiliation.”2
Keeping the Burns name out of the newspapers was only a pipe dream on Fred’s part, just as Florence had feared it would be as soon as the kidnapping/extortion scheme began to fall apart the moment Charles Hurlburt escaped into the Surprise Department Store. She knew that the Brooks murder case of 1902 would cause this new charge against her to be published everywhere. And so it was, the very next day: “Florence Burns in Bold ‘Badger’ Game”; “Florence Burns Again in Hands of Police”; “Florence Burns in ‘Badger’ Plot, Lawyer Charges”; “Girl Once Tried for Murder Held in Badger Case.”
Almost immediately after the articles appeared, Charles Hurlburt was fired from his job at Lawyers Title Insurance & Trust Company because of the notoriety it brought to the business and to its employee.
Although they were being held in separate sections of the Tombs and had no contact, it’s clear that before they were arrested, Flo and Eddie had gotten together and cobbled together something of a common story to counter the one that Charles would tell. The missing Martin Held would be tagged as the idea man behind the scheme, the one responsible for getting them involved. The police had supposedly searched for Held, but they probably did not do so very assiduously, as they had two perfectly good suspects in custody and it was likely that “Martin Held” was not the third suspect’s real name anyway. As a result, the plan to blame Held was not going to work.
Predictably, the grand jury returned an indictment against Florence Burns Wildrick and Edward H. Brooks on September 30, 1910, but the trial would not begin for another twenty-four days while both sides prepared. Because of the potential conflict of interest, Flo and Eddie each had an attorney—not, as might be expected, public defender types, but two very experienced and esteemed practitioners. Either these lawyers—Robert H. Roy for Florence and Clark L. Jordan for Eddie—were working pro bono or the defendants’ families had hired them. Charles Hurlburt would be represented by Assistant DA Charles C. Nott, prosecuting on behalf of the people, and Hon. Thomas C. Crain presided in the Court of General Sessions.
Notably absent during the proceedings, which would last five days, was any kind of report of the testimony by any newspaper. They published the arrests and they published the verdicts, but not a word in between. There is very little hint that this was anything other than a standard Badger Game, except for a few vague references to Florence and the victim’s previous acquaintance. The reason, of course, is because of the salacious content of the testimony, which even by today’s standards would be considered unsuitable for verbatim quoting in a newspaper. One newspaper did explain that the trial was full of “filthy” testimony that it refused to print. Even the “yellow” papers would not dare to cross that line.3
Assistant District Attorney Nott, in his opening statement, began by apologizing to the jury for the “rather unpleasant features” they would be subjected to. After giving a detailed summary of the facts of the case, Nott admitted that the victim, Hurlburt, had had “immoral relations” (sex outside of marriage) with Florence, but that he had been led into it and that “if every young man in this city who has improper sexual relations with a woman were to suffer for it as much as this man has suffered, there would be much greater deterrence for such things than there is now.”
The elements of the crime of extortion do not take into account whether the threatened accusations against the victim are factually true. Even if they are, the accusers can still be convicted of extortion. However, it would be natural for jurors to feel that if the accusations were true, the victim more or less got what he deserved through his own immoral actions, so Nott strongly hinted that Charles Hurlburt was not guilty of acts of sodomy: “It is for you to say after hearing his testimony whether there is an atom of truth in the filthy allegations they make against him, or is it not just the weapon these people used to deter people from prosecuting them by knowing that if they are prosecuted the complainant will be subjected to this unpleasant notoriety and these sort of charges.”
Jurors would also have to decide for themselves whether Charles Hurlburt signed the blank confession paper and the bank drafts voluntarily or because his life was threatened. If he did it voluntarily and under no threat at all, then the defendants were not guilty. If, however, he gave up these papers involuntarily because of the threats to his life and his reputation, then they should find the defendants guilty.
As the complainant, Charles Hurlburt was the main prosecution witness. It had taken much courage for him to proceed with prosecuting Florence and Eddie, a kind of moral courage that they did not think he would be able to muster. He gave his testimony in a straightforward way, without histrionics or outrage or indignation, and came across as extremely believable. Under cross-examination, Charles did not contradict anything he had said on direct and firmly denied ever having engaged in oral or anal sex.
Eddie Brooks, however, was by turns sullen, sarcastic, smarmy, and defiant on the stand. The judge had to tell him to sit up in his chair and his lawyer told him to speak up. On direct examination, he was boldly lewd in eagerly describing what he and others supposedly said, with a lurid scenario for the confrontation between Charles Hurlburt and the two intruders, Eddie and Martin Held. He estimated that it was no more than three minutes from the time Florence closed the door to the two men bursting in and, in that length of time, Charles was down on his knees with his face “in her private parts.” They would have gotten right down to it as soon as that door was closed, by this account. He claimed to be so outraged that after he threw Hurlburt against the wall, he lashed out at Flo, who was trying to calm him down—“Get away, you dirty filthy trollop!”—after which he hit her and knocked her down. However, as Charles did not testify that Eddie had hit Flo except over the argument in the taxi as to who was in charge of the scheme, this probably did not happen. It was all a piece of theater for the jury.
Brooks seemed to delight in his physical abuse of Flo and also of Charles, possibly thinking that it would paint him as a legitimately incensed “fiancé” who could not restrain himself in the presence of such outrageously immoral deeds. The first time he hit Charles was when he caught him in bed with Flo on 22nd Street, he said. Charles supposedly cried and begged Eddie not to hit him. Brooks confided to the jury, man-to-man: “To be candid with you, gentlemen, I felt like a big coward for hitting him because I expected him to fight back. It was the first time I had ever struck the man and I felt a little bit cowardly for doing it, because he did not hit me back.”
Eddie’s entire narrative portrayed himself as the manly protector of decency and Charles as the weak, womanish hanger-on, forever following Flo around: “If I did not see that man when I was out with Mrs. Wildrick, or spot him on some corner, I thought I was with the wrong woman.” As for imprisoning Charles, well, that was just nonsense. Charles was mortally embarrassed by having been caught in an act of sodomy and offered, on his own, to sign a confession to be used against him if it ever happened again. Eddie would always have leverage against him, so he would not need to tell the police about this particular instance. As Charles was too shaken to write coherently, he dictated his confession for Florence to write down. Then Florence added her own confession so that Eddie could have them both arrested if they transgressed in the future.
A few minutes after this, Eddie claimed, Charles offered to give him $1,000 for the return of the very document he had just voluntarily dictated and signed! Moreover, Charles chose to stay in the room with them all night long while they played cards and drank, when he easily could have left at any time. As for why Eddie chased him all around New York on Monday and followed him on the street on Tuesday, that was all about getting Charles’s share of the cab fare, nothing more. And that was also why he, Flo, and Held went to Charles’s office.
It was an unbelievable performance that soon unraveled under the withering cross-examination of Nott, whose every question demonstrated a profound contempt for and disbelief of this man and his testimony. Brooks found himself in the awkward position of having to explain his previous lies by making up other lies to account for them, which resulted in preposterous statements. For example, he had previously testified that he had once taken Flo to his mother’s house to stay for a short while and had told his mother the truth about her (which he had not done): that Flo was still married, not divorced, and that Eddie was living with her as if they were married. When Nott got him to admit that he had sex with Flo on only the second time they had met, the assistant district attorney immediately went to the “I tell my mother everything” lie:
NOTT: Did you tell your mother that?
BROOKS: No, sir.
NOTT: Do you tell your mother every time you have connections with a woman?
BROOKS: Do you think I do?
NOTT: You told me you tell her everything and had no secrets from her, do you or don’t you?
BROOKS: I do tell her everything of any consequence.
In reality, Flo had sex with many men, both before and while she was with Eddie, some of which he had encouraged, telling her that if their money situation did not improve, she would have to “go out on the street.” So he was little better than a pimp, an image he tried to dispel by claiming, to the point of absurdity, to know nothing of her previous sexual connections with other men: “The subject is very distasteful to me. She does not dare to tell me about people she had met prior to meeting me.” So how did he know there had been others? “Don’t you think that any ordinary man could read between the lines of that [1902] case which she was mixed up in? … I judged from what I have heard. We have heard a whole lot about Florence Burns, you know.”
Eddie claimed Flo had not had sex with anyone while she was with him, but then what about Charles Hurlburt? Well, she never told him she was having sex with Hurlburt. It was obvious he knew, though, and of course they had discussed it because it was the basis for setting the Badger Game trap.
There were many instances where Eddie was slippery and sly, not answering a question directly unless pinned down. Had he paid Flo’s rent? First he said yes, then said he did when he could, then asked what month Nott referred to, then admitted he didn’t always pay her rent but gave her money when he could.
NOTT: Did you tell her that you were not going to support her and she would have to go out on the street and do some work?
BROOKS: Do I look like that kind of a man?
NOTT: If you ask my opinion, I will give it to you. I ask you the question.
BROOKS: No, sir, I never did.
Eddie admitted he beat Flo often, mostly because she talked to men on the street, although he could have been drunk for some of these beatings. He also beat her because she drank.
NOTT: Nobody beat you when you got drunk, you only beat her when she got drunk, is that it?
BROOKS: Yes, that is it.
Eddie was cross-examined at length about his spotty employment history. He denied he had been fired from the Holmes Company for intoxication but claimed he resigned instead because the local agency had no power to fire anyone. Asked why he left the Erie Railroad, he began yet another convoluted answer:
BROOKS: I left the Erie after a bad cold—
NOTT: I don’t care a rap about your cold—when did you leave the Erie?
Whenever he truly got stuck, Eddie would give his own version of “I don’t recall” with “I won’t confine myself to any date/amount.” After Nott read Florence’s addendum to Charles’s “confession,” Eddie claimed not to know what the word clitoris meant. Told it meant vagina, he responded that Charles, who supposedly had dictated it, was the college graduate and would know those technical words.
Nott’s cross-examination of Eddie sarcastically referred to Florence as his “intended wife” or his “fiancée” to underline the contrast between how a real gentleman would behave regarding his future wife and how Eddie behaved. In this exchange, Eddie went around and around, exasperating the already-impatient prosecutor:
NOTT: Will you tell the jury why on earth you had him in your rooms all night, that was your home?
BROOKS: Why he was there?
BROOKS: Yes.
NOTT: You and the woman you were going to marry?
BROOKS: Yes.
NOTT: Why did you keep him there all night?
BROOKS: We were all drinking, as the complainant says.
NOTT: You went out and got the liquor?
BROOKS: Yes.
NOTT: Were you drunk before you went out and got the liquor?
BROOKS: No.
NOTT: Why did you go out and get liquor to bring in and sit around and drink with that man in the room who had done that to your intended wife?
BROOKS: He did not have anything to drink.
NOTT: Why did you go out and get liquor to bring back to your room and sit around with a man who had done that to your intended wife?
BROOKS: I went out to get it for Held, and Mrs. Wildrick had some and I had some.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
NOTT: Why did you leave him there when you went out to get liquor, why didn’t you kick him out?
BROOKS: Because he stayed there.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
NOTT: I ask you why did you let him stay there?
BROOKS: I had been drinking.
NOTT: You just said a minute ago you had not been drinking until you went out to get the liquor.
From there, Brooks equivocated about the difference between “drinking” and “being intoxicated,” although he had clearly responded “no” to whether he had been “drunk” in the prosecutor’s earlier question. In order to account for that discrepancy, he said he had been drinking—just one or two whiskeys—with Martin Held before they entered the room, but those two drinks caused him to be “slightly under the influence of liquor.”
Eddie Brooks’s testimony was a maddening, confusing jumble of denial and contradiction. Since there was no press coverage of the trial, we can’t know whether his mother was there, but she probably was. It must have pained her to see her son, who once had a bright future, sink so low as to even be accused of such a sordid crime, let alone be guilty of it.
It is an axiom among defense lawyers never to put defendants on the stand unless there is a compelling reason to do so, especially if those defendants would not come off well or would be prone to falling into prosecutorial traps. Of course, if a defendant insists, it is his or her right to testify, even against a defense attorney’s strong objection. In this trial, neither defendant was particularly sympathetic to a jury, but the defense really had no other choice. There was no exculpatory evidence and what testimony existed (patrolman John Hewitt, Fanelli the store clerk, Paul Adamson the taxi driver, and Mrs. Grygiel the landlady) backed up Charles Hurlburt’s account. They would have to hope that they could spin the facts to at least a reasonable doubt, so that it became a matter of “he said/they said” and that maybe at least one juror might hold out for the “they” side.
If Eddie Brooks’s testimony was a mass of wily attempts at dodging the truth and accounting for discrepancies, Florence’s was a self-pitying mess of primarily alcohol-induced forgetfulness. Whenever she wanted to avoid answering a question, she pleaded intoxication to the point of not remembering. When it suited her purpose, she had pinpoint accuracy of past events. And, throughout it all, she blamed her current predicament, as well as her alcoholism, on her troubles since 1902. It was not a pretty performance. Her most outrageous statement was that within three minutes (between the time she shut the door to her room and the two men burst in), she was totally unconscious as to what was going on—the result of the two half-pints of gin she had drunk before meeting Hurlburt and the stultifying effects of the heat in the room. Therefore, she had no knowledge of any acts of sodomy and certainly no willing participation in them. When she woke up because of the loud arguing among the three men, she realized something was amiss, but she was at a loss to discern what it was.
Another thing that was not likely to endear her to the jury was her failure to remember the exact year when Walter Brooks had died. She said it was 1901, the same year she mistakenly thought she had married Tad Wildrick. She had no reason to lie about this, so she obviously had misremembered the year, a year that should have sealed itself into her subconscious. That she did not recall when her boyfriend, whom she had been nearly put on trial for killing, had been murdered must have sent a signal to the jury as to her cold carelessness: It was not important enough for her to remember. She had probably gotten away with what most people felt was a deliberate murder, and possibly for justifiable reasons, but then to forget the date? Inexcusable!
There were some questions she simply refused to answer based on a New York statute that allowed refusal if it would “tend to incriminate or degrade her,” something of an expansion of the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution. Those answers would probably be in the affirmative, such as whether she had sex with anyone in the year and a half after she left Tad Wildrick; or whether she had sex that December or January (so after she had met Eddie) with a man named Jack Carey; or what she meant by having sex, but not intercourse, with Hurlburt. In one instance, she claimed to have done “something against nature,” but then said she had been too drunk to remember. “I had been drinking considerable on account of some of the troubles since I left my husband, and I could not even swear positively at certain times what I had done.”
The trial was not without unintended humor. Flo was trying to set up a pattern of “unnatural” sex acts on Hurlburt’s part and recounted their walk from the meeting place to her room on September 18. She wanted to stop at a drugstore for a bottle of bichloride tablets and he had given her a quarter for this, along with a request for her to get a laxative as well. She pretended not to know what it was for, but then claimed that he told her, and it was for “a filthy reason,” which obviously referred to anal sex. She was just about to give the reason (being directed by her attorney to do so) when Nott objected. Judge Crain, instead of ruling on the objection, quickly said, “Strike out the reason”—even though she had not said what the reason was! Nobody wanted that visual.
Florence admitted to having sex with Eddie the second time she met him but blamed it on Charles for buying them both so many drinks. “At this time, I was under the influence of liquor most of the time through my troubles, and I cannot really tell you exactly” was her response as to how long after meeting Charles Hurlburt she had first met Eddie Brooks. “I had been drinking a great deal in the past year,” she went on. “I have had so very many troubles that I have formed the habit of it more or less.”
Florence had decided that portraying herself as an alcoholic, promiscuous woman was better than the alternative of telling the truth as to what had really gone on in this very cruel, sordid tale. It did not require her to think or attempt to explain or try to outmaneuver the prosecutor. And maybe she could get at least one juror to feel sorry for her. Her testimony, especially on cross-examination, is peppered with comments like these: “I have a nervous condition.” “I am getting tired and I cannot think. What did you ask me?” “This is an awful ordeal for me—I have been through thirteen hours of the third degree in my life [actually, only two hours] and my nerves are not very good.” “I don’t remember saying anything like that to him.” “They usually put everything I do on the front page [of the Journal].” “Wait just a minute until I quiet down, and then I will answer you.” “My liberty depends upon this—I wish you would give me a minute’s rest until I think a little.”
Poor Flo! She was not smart enough to think fast. The judge had to keep reminding her not to tell a story but to listen to the question that was being asked and to answer only that question. Some of the exchanges were mind-numbingly confusing, like a rendition of “Who’s on First?” She bragged about all the money she had made on the stage, so much money that it left her unimpressed with and unconcerned about the $500 promissory note from Hurlburt. In fact, she averred, she had received several offers to go back on the stage just that year. But, asked to name one of these offers, she could not. And, given the sad state of her appearance at that time, it was unlikely that anyone would seek out the (no longer) “beautiful Florence Burns, the Belle of Bedford Avenue.” One can only imagine the despair of her own attorney witnessing this performance.
In his summation, Assistant District Attorney Nott emphasized the absurdity of the defendants’ claim that an attorney for the Lawyers Title Insurance & Trust Company had voluntarily dictated and signed a confession to the crime of sodomy, then minutes later offered to buy it back for $1,000. Added to that improbability was his voluntarily remaining with these defendants all night long while they drank and played cards, when he himself did neither. Clearly, he was held prisoner and not free to leave without threat of bodily injury, which was backed up by the statements of Paul Adamson, the cab driver, and patrolman John Hewitt, as well as Fanelli, the clerk at the Surprise Department Store.
The jurors had not been fooled at all. It took them only twenty minutes—the approximate time it took to smoke a cigar—to come back with the verdict of guilty for both Flo and Eddie. On November 1, 1910, Judge Crain sentenced Eddie to “not less than seven years and five months nor more than fourteen years and ten months” in Sing Sing Prison in Ossining, New York (the very place Eddie had threatened to send Charles to with his sodomy accusation), and Florence to the same length of time in the Auburn Prison for Women. Because it was their first felony offense, the judge could not impose the maximum of twenty-five years, but he told them he would have done that, given the cruel circumstances surrounding the crime. Newspapers reported that Florence held her head high and smiled, as if she cared not a fig for it, while Eddie turned pale and put his head down, as if in shame. Because there was no newspaper coverage of the trial, the two reactions reported here might lead to a conclusion that Flo was the brains behind this scheme and Eddie her possibly reluctant devoted follower. Nothing could have been further from the truth.
If you were living in a boardinghouse in 1910, there was a good chance that you would not actually be getting your “board,” but only a room if the owner did not care to provide meals (typically only dinner and maybe breakfast). In that case, you would contract with another nearby boardinghouse for your meals, paying weekly, as you did for your room. This is what Charles Hurlburt had done for the entire time he was in New York City, since 1904. He had a room at 39 Seventh Avenue, where he had met Florence; and he took his dinner meals at Mrs. Mary Kavanaugh’s boardinghouse at 140 West Thirteenth Street, just around the corner.4
Having dinner nearly every night with the same people meant that they got to know each other fairly well. Mrs. Kavanaugh and her boarders could tell that Charles, who was normally a serious man anyway, had been depressed since the Badger Game incident. What an ordeal that must have been for him! First of all, the crushing betrayal by Florence, whom he had taken care of and loved and spent money on; then the shocking false accusations by her and Brooks, accompanied by physical attacks and threats; their imprisonment of him and the whole harrowing sequence of events the next day; losing his job because of this; and then the trial with its degrading testimony, which was so disgusting that no newspaper would print it. We don’t know if people attended it, as they did every other sensational trial, but we must assume they did to see the fall of Florence Burns if for nothing else. On top of that, Charles might have felt some guilt at having caused Flo and Eddie to be sent to prison, even though they were the sole architects of their own fate.
Charles was not in any financial straits because of losing his job with Lawyers Title. His maternal uncle, F. Wayland Foster, said he had accounts in six or seven New York City banks and that Charles never seemed to have less than $100 in his pocket at any time. He may have been looking to start up a business on his own, possibly a law practice once more. Foster wanted them to go into business together, buying out an already-going concern in a western part of New York State that was a combination of law and real estate sales, but Charles was not keen on this. However, Foster claimed, his nephew had recently come to realize that it would be easier than starting from scratch.5
In July 1911, an odd phenomenon occurred, given Charles’s fastidious and very tidy habits. He began bringing a companion with him to dinner at Mrs. Kavanaugh’s, a man whose appearance and clothing were more than a little off-putting to the other boarders. The norm for dining was a white shirt and an appropriate tie, but this man wore a black shirt with a red tie, as well as a handkerchief around his neck in place of a collar. Charles does not seem to have introduced him by name, instead informing the others that the man was “an old friend fallen on hard times.” This mysterious stranger was described as large, heavyset, and with a dark complexion, almost foreign looking. In fact, the description fits that of the elusive Martin Held! However, it is unlikely to have been Held and hard to imagine under what circumstances he could have come back, with his cohorts in prison, himself vulnerable to arrest, and his hold over Hurlburt eradicated. This man came to dinner on July 10, 11, 15 and August 12 and 16.6
On August 12, the guest’s appearance had improved a bit, and on the 16th, he even had worn a white shirt and a collar and looked “almost resplendent.” It was one of the two instances that caused Mrs. Kavanaugh and her boarders to take note of the date. The other instance was Charles Hurlburt’s almost euphoric state, the best mood they had ever seen him in. It was the last time they would see either Hurlburt or his mysterious friend, although Charles had paid for his meals up through August 20.7
On Saturday, August 19, the dark stranger showed up at Hurlburt’s board-inghouse on Seventh Avenue. He asked the landlord, Mr. Fernandez, if he could go to Hurlburt’s room. “He’s not in,” Fernandez told him. “I know,” the stranger replied, “but I want to go there, anyway.” Fernandez showed him the way, then came back a little while later to look in. He saw the man sprawled out on Charles’s bed, sound asleep, and the floor littered with papers and other objects, as if the visitor had rummaged through them to find something. Fernandez declared that nothing was missing, although it’s hard to know how he could have determined that.8
On Sunday, August 20, a body washed up on the shore at Jones Point in Rockaway County, opposite Iona Island, about fifty miles from New York City. The body was wearing trousers, but no coat, hat, or other clothing. One of the pockets contained a West Shore Railroad schedule with the name Charles W. Hurlburt on it, a couple of coins, and a gold ring engraved “Alva to Lyman.” Alva was Charles’s mother’s nickname, short for Alvesta.9
Because of the name on the timetable, the coroner’s office thought the body might be that of Hurlburt. Eventually, Charles’s uncle Wayland Foster was contacted, and on September 1, he confirmed the identification as that of his nephew, about two weeks later than the probable date of death of August 17 or 18.
In a family of people who tended to conspiracy theories, it is not surprising that Wayland Foster’s first reaction was that Charles had been murdered by friends of Florence and Eddie. But what friends? Neither had much in the way of friends other than drinking companions and occasional sexual partners. And to what end? Flo and Eddie were not going to be let out of prison early. Foster alleged that Charles had told him he had received threatening letters from both of them, vowing revenge, like a couple of Mafia capos dealing death from their cells.10 How would they have orchestrated this from two separate prisons that were 236 miles apart?
Prior to about 1970, with the case of Palmagiano v. Travisono in the US District Court for the District of Rhode Island, courts did not interfere with penal institutions’ censorship of inmates’ incoming and outgoing mail as this was deemed to be part of the necessary maintenance of prison security. In the Palmagiano case, a class-action lawsuit by inmates challenging censorship of their mail as unconstitutional, the assistant director stated that he “felt he had a statutory duty to censor outgoing mail in order to ‘protect the outside community from insulting, obscene, or threatening letters.”’11 In 1911, then, it was probably standard penal practice that any mail written by inmates was read prior to being sent, and any correspondence containing threats to outsiders would not have been allowed to go through. Nobody but Wayland Foster mentioned these so-called threats, which means that he either made them up to encourage an investigation into the death of his nephew, or Charles made them up so his family would not believe he had committed suicide, or Charles was growing paranoid as a result of increasing mental illness.
In the meantime, two lawyers who were employed at the Lawyers Title Insurance & Trust Company when Charles was there filed a will for probate that had been drawn up by Charles on January 21, 1910. It left his entire estate to these men, Henry W. Aube and William Murray. Immediately, Wayland Foster telegrammed his brother-in-law’s widow (Charles’s stepmother) in Palmyra: “Probate Charley’s will in Wayne county immediately. Two men here say they have another will making them his sole heirs. None of us ever heard of them here.” Anna Hurlburt was the sole legatee of a will that Charles had drawn up in 1901. As a more recent will had already been filed in New York City, she ultimately had to file a contest of it there, which she did in November, alleging that at the time of making out the 1910 will, her stepson was “incompetent … and was subjected to impostion and fraud.” It was estimated that Charles’s estate, before the release of the “secret trust” funds, was $30,000. In an eerie coincidence, at the same time Mrs. Hurlburt filed her contest of her stepson’s will in Manhattan, Fred Burns got a writ of habeas corpus in Brooklyn based on his contention that Florence’s sentence should have been for a misdemeanor and not a felony. He would lose this appeal in 1912.12
It is interesting to note that January 21, 1910, the date on which Charles made this new will, was after he had gotten involved with Florence. Yet nothing was left to her even though he had already spent quite a bit of money on her.
On September 20, some visitors to Iona Island—now part of Bear Mountain State Park—found Charles Hurlburt’s hat, coat, and vest under a plank.13 This indicates that he placed them there, then, wearing only his trousers, entered the water and drowned. Was it a swimming accident? He would most likely have brought more appropriate swimwear if he had intended to swim. Although we know very little about this very serious young man, physical exercise does not seem to have been part of his life and, if it had been, there were many closer places around Manhattan or Brooklyn where he could have gone swimming.
The coroner, A. W. Dutcher, declared that the cause of Charles’s death was drowning and that he had not been murdered.14 There were no physical marks of violence on him, which indicated that he had committed suicide or had died by misadventure. Those who believed in the “threats from prison” rumor thought he might have killed himself through fear of reprisals.
There is another indication that Charles Hurlburt committed suicide, and that is his extremely good mood on August 16, the last time he dined at Mrs. Kavanaugh’s. Today, we know that often someone who has entertained the idea of suicide and finally makes up his mind to go through with it is so incredibly relieved that he exhibits a happy sense of peace. Those around him mistake this for real happiness and an indication that their loved one has put his troubles behind him and is looking forward to moving on in life. It is then a shock to hear that he has killed himself because “he seemed so happy.”15
Wayland Foster thought that another proof of murder was that Charles’s usual $100 was not found with him, nor was the gold watch his father gave him. But these items were not found with his folded clothing on Iona Island, either, and it does not seem that anyone had discovered that clothing prior to September 20. Charles had probably given these items away, maybe even to the mysterious stranger—yet another sign of a decision to commit suicide.16
What of the foreign-looking stranger? Was he really a former acquaintance? This man never came forward when Charles’s body was discovered, which is suspicious and leads to the conclusion that possibly he knew about the suicide. What was he looking for in Charles’s room? Obviously, the stranger’s newfound sartorial splendor was due to Charles, either through a purchase or a donation of clothing. Since the improvement in his dress occurred on August 12 and 16, and not before, these must have been items given to him by Charles, who would not be needing them anymore.
Why did Charles have the railroad timetable with him? Homer Gardiner, a man living near Jones Point, said that a few days before the body was found, Charles had stopped him to ask directions to the nearest railroad station. This may be how he got to Iona Island. He put his name on the timetable by way of identification. It is, all in all, a very strange story that leaves too many questions.
In December 1911, Mrs. Anna Hurlburt withdrew her contest to Charles’s 1910 will and Charles’s two lawyer friends—Aube and Murray—received it all.17
Charles Hurlburt, age thirty-two, is buried in Palmyra Cemetery with his family.18